Nan Hoover

(New York City, 12 mei 1931 - Berlijn, 9 juni 2008)

Videoperformance
1976 – 1977

The strictly contemplative demeanour of Nan Hoover’s Performance works rouses very subjective associations in viewers, whose perception of the body and of light is intensified. A spirtual realm is accessed through the artist’s minimalistic handling of her materials – colour and (sometimes electronic) light – and her decelerated motional studies, due to a concentration on what she termed the ‘contrasts between the scale of the human form and its shadow’. Thus, the performance stage reaches out and embraces the space occupied by the audience, who, finding their unmoving figures co-opted into the production, might well feel transported back into Plato’s cave, whom Hoover quotes with the words, ‘Consider nothing more true than the shadows.’